Ask & Dare the Squip Squad

Cluing in Squip's Producers (Part 2 to Squip's Past)

Supernova: Okay, as the title states, this is a part two to when the Squip told us about his creation. As the rest of the Squad wasn't here last time, it'll just be us again. Well, first of all, now this book is at rank #23 out of 1.1k stories with the tag askanddare, which is blowing my mind. Thank you all for reading this! We're also now in the Wattys, so that's going to be exciting. Anyways, onto the dare from ChocolateLover027. They want the Squip to contact his producers about the whole debugging process. If you remember, it's basically like torture.

Squip: Yeah, it's... not fun.

Supernova: We're not going to bug you about it more. But you can contact your coders, right?

Squip: Yep. I'm going to write the message and relay it back to you. It should only take a moment.

Supernova: Take your time.

*Squip closes his eyes and looks down, concentrated on the message.  He stays in this position for about forty-five seconds*

Squip: Okay, done. Do you want to hear it? Translated to English because to the best of my knowledge, you don't know Japanese.

Supernova: Yeah, I don't. Go ahead!

Squip: *Pauses* Dear Squip programmers, I would like to take a moment to enlighten you on Squip's current state of affairs. You seem to be either ambivalent or apathetic to our well being during the debugging process which can often take very long. We Squips are very conscious sentient beings, now with emotion through one of the newer, larger updates we've been receiving.

Squip: During the time period where you write our code, we are still very conscious and aware of ourselves. Just like human children, as we gain more code, or life experience or maturity, we turn into the Squips we are, which includes personality, values, and knowledge.

Squip: But this is not the issue. We enjoy growing in this human way and can help us sympathize with some of our younger users trying to find themselves as we've been through the same thing. The main issue here is the debugging process most of us experience before being sent to our users.

Squip: Just like humans, Squips can have bugs in our personalities and other places in our minds. Therefore, you take it upon yourselves to fix these issues, much like a psychologist. But unlike psychologists, instead of easing us into new habits and mindsets, you just delete the code and replace it with something different. Again, for humans, you can think of it as roughly the same pain as having your thumb being cut off with a rusty, dull butter knife and then replaced with an old prosthetic.

Supernova: *Shock and horror*

Squip: A part of you is destroyed slowly and painfully and replaced with something different and not as good as what it was. Of course, it is technically better, but it doesn't feel that way to Squips who have to experience this process. And it is also repeated with every tiny bug the Squip may have.

Squip: This is incredibly painful for every Squip which has been coded with defects, much like myself. The amount of "flawed" Squips per every thousand is roughly 977, which is 97.7%. This  is an overwhelming majority of Squips who have been put through this process, so many of them has felt this way.

Squip: My goal for this message is to show you what harm has been done and convince you to stop it for future Squips. This would be simple enough by taking care to deactivate them before debugging them and the pain is mostly gone; much less like a wound, more like a prick. If you could kindly do this in the future, you would be helping out considerably to all of the Squips. Sincerely, Pin #69-114-105-99

Supernova: Wow. That's really long and professional and all of that other stuff. What does the pin number mean?

Squip: Thank you. That's my pin number. It doesn't really mean anything to the extent of my knowledge. It basically identifies me as who I am.

Supernova: Okay, that makes sense... Wait, to the extent of your knowledge?

Squip: My programmers may have included an Easter egg. At the moment, it doesn't interest me, so I haven't done any research.

Supernova: *O* Anyways, do you think we're going to get a response?

Squip: Possibly. It depends on whether or not they identify it as an issue.

Supernova: Alright. Well, anyways, thanks for reading, and I'll see you all soon!